The Film Thread

Aim the drill at the ground and turn it on.

The fascinating thing about this is that the film likely only got made, or at least this version of it, because of how in the tank WB’s standing is in the industry. The cost cutting they have done, the projects that were axed or shelved, since the Discovery merger has made it a studio that people with options are very weary of working with. So for them to bank roll a version of this film that is expensive for PTA, for a film maker who just doesn’t make much money with his films, is being viewed by most as a sort of peace offering.

We lost the looney toons film so this could live

Another feel good movie tonight. Possibly the greatest ever, although its one truly good character doesn’t survive.

Clue: That rug really tied the room together!

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Rope?

Possibly my favourite scene / joke from any movie. So simple / childish / clever. So funny (imo).

There are so many in that film. The whole thing with his car!
The Creedence tape :rofl:

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Yeah so many great performances in that film, and so many funny moments. Got to be one of my favourite movies.

I need to watch it again. I struggled to warm to it being honest and I appreciate that’s probably a criticism of me more than the film.

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Yeah, the cast are amazing. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, Turturro, Buscemi, Gazzara, Karl Hungus, the list goes on.

There’s so much going on in every scene, which is why it’s still great after ten or more viewings.

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It might be because it’s so different to anything else, although it does have elements of the screwball comedies and noir detective stories of Hollywood’s golden age, there’s really nothing else quite like it. The first time I watched it, I spent far too much time trying to understand the plot. It’s only once you let go of that that you can just enjoy the ride.

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Sorta like David Lynch movies for me - you have got to let go to really get in to them.

And of course Almodóvar movies - all about my mother and talk to her are just out there but amazing!

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Might be a load of tosh, but also, there could be something of interest in these films for others to watch. All reviews are offered by comments sent into the Guardian Newspaper.

‘Left me physically exhausted’: readers on their most stressful movies ever

Story by Guardian readers

United 93

When the film ended suddenly and silently I found I was gripping the seat armrests and noticed too that nobody moved. I can’t remember a cinema experience where literally nobody moved after a film ended. It was dead quiet for several seconds, I am guessing that many if not most of the audience had actually witnessed the real event on 9/11 on TV, as I had. Visceral cinema a bit too close to the bone, yet sensitive, nonexploitative and direction as tight as it gets.

Seconds

There isn’t a moment throughout when it isn’t twisting one nerve or many, from the depressed middle-aged man (John Randolph) going robotically through life, to the sinister men (Will Geer and Jeff Corey) who offer him a new life (turned into Rock Hudson) – that he can’t refuse, and can’t be allowed to leave.

Left me shaken for days, even though I had been warned.

Gravity

I was both simultaneously claustrophobic and agoraphobic watching it. I would have loved to have seen the 3D version but I think I would have been hospitalised.

Alien

Managed to get in to see Alien when it first came out when I was 14. Although it seems quite slow-paced these days, the whole thing, especially the last 20 minutes, had me coiled up like a spring. Remember we didn’t really know what the hell it was threatening Ripley at that point which just added to the tension.

The Road

It made me feel almost sick. I had read the book and that was bad but the film took it to another level. I couldn’t stop watching it. It was a few years ago and I sometimes think about watching it again but I just can’t bring myself to despite it being a great film. I’m not sure I’m strong enough!
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I remember feeling as though I’d been assaulted in some way, or just staggered out of a car wreck … I did though appreciate the quality of the film and performances etc. As such, I’ve tried to rewatch it on two occasions and I actually just can’t do it.

Paranormal Activity

Everything was done with subtlety, the corner bed sheet, bedroom door moving marginally, but the real bogeyman, was the real time clock top right of the screen, ticking over capturing almost nothing, except a couple tossing and turning throughout the night, whilst unbeknown to them, a presence is around them, making the slightest of adjustments, within their bedroom. This is the one film, that no matter how many times I’ve seen it, still persists in unsettling me.

Munich

I love cold war-era spy films. Spielberg’s evocation of them with Munich is note-perfect. And yet, it speculates on real events and regularly shoves the true horror of this reality in your face. One minute you’re marvelling at the setting, sense of era, cinematography etc, then the next you’re dealing with the aftermath of an indiscriminate bomb attack. Or the assassination of an unarmed woman. Or a suicide. And Spielberg’s lens is absolutely unflinching. It’s as though it picks up the reality that Fleming and Le Carré were riffing off and says ‘You think this is entertaining? Really?’

Naked

Went to watch with a lady on a first (ish) date and after the film ended I expected we would move on to a drink but she said nope, I just want to go home. She felt thoroughly worn down by the film. In retrospect really not the right film to help advance a budding romance.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and His Lover

It’s the only time I have ever come close to passing out in the cinema. Long ago now, but I think it was the scene where a young boy was being forced to eat buttons that did it for me.

Skinamarink

Now, be warned, for every horror fan who loved it, there are probably nine more who thought it was like watching paint dry. But for this small minority, myself included, it managed to hit the right buttons, and I don’t think there’s anything else, including Lynch, who hits the childhood nightmare buttons as accurately as that film. It’s minimalist, maddening, deeply unsettling on an atavistic level, and is about as bleak as it gets.

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

Not only it was an unnerving watch. It also left me completely emotionally and physically exhausted after its three and a half hours. The anger, the frustration, sometimes even pure rage it induced in me stayed with me for the next 2-3 days. Such a brilliant movie, but also such a “never again” movie.

Captain Phillips

Watched it at the cinema and did not anticipate the near constant tension it generated over its run time. When Hanks breaks down at the end of the film it mirrored the release this viewer needed as well!

Kanał

Polish made about the Warsaw rising against the Germans. I think the final scene is a young couple of fighters who are escaping through the sewers, reaching the Vistula, but unable to get out because of metal bars at the end of the sewer. I don’t think anyone else has mentioned it and I have gone through 14 pages of posts.

Eden Lake

At least with an American film you can distance yourself a little. This film set in the north of England, with very realistic characters, was horrific. I watched on a laptop in bed, which made me feel like I was actually in the film, and had nightmares for six weeks afterwards. Have never watched a film in bed since.

Funny Games

Around two-thirds of the audience left halfway through the cinema screening and I regretted for a long time not being one of them. It is a psychological thriller with not a single scene of something horrible while the most horrible things happen in the film to a family. I would never ever watch this film again.
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Brilliant but unbearable. I constantly rewatch films that impress me, but this is once only. And some years after seeing it I actually had a strange young man in tennis kit knock on the front door with unusual questions. I did not admit him. Do not let him in.
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Haneke cleverly constructed the film to be both coldly unemotional and hyper stress-inducing. I had to pause for about an hour when watching it alone. Definitely a one watch movie.

Whiplash

A pressure-cooker of a film, with an ambiguous ending … Was it all worth it to achieve greatness? The three of us watching it were, at times, forgetting to breathe, and my fellow cinema-goer to my right even got stomach cramps out of it. But as it ended, we all spontaneously applauded, and so did the entire audience at our small indie cinema!

The Woman in Cabin 10 is an interesting premise and Knightley plays her role as the confused “why does everyone think I’m making this up” witness well enough but the thrilling scenes fade out once the truth of what happened is revealed (midway through).

Few noticeable plot holes which were mind numbingly bad, like you’d expect at least one person on a boarded yacht full of guests and staff crew to have seen someone push another person off a balcony, into the pool, before closing the shutters as they struggle to escape.

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Could have put this in the tv thread, but it’s probably of most interest to film fans…

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Looks interesting. Pity it’s on Apple TV

Oof, didn’t know he was this old already. Has had it rough in recent years too. :frowning:

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I watched a documentary called A Perfect Neighbor last night about a neighborhood killing in Ocala, the redneck part of Central Florida about an hour north of Orlando where I live. A woman was known to the police as a nuisance who called them out over and over again with complaints about being antagonized by her neighbors, especially the kids, primarily black kids. The film uses body cam footage to tell the story of how it was her who was the antagonizer, who just attacked kids for playing in the neighborhood. The police would just come out over and over and try to defuse the situation, telling her that she just needs to learn to get along with her neighbors better and asking the other neighbors to just give her as wide a berth as possible. Until eventually one night she physically confronted some of the kids, leading to one of the mums going over there to confront her and being shot dead by this woman through the other side of her locked front door.

It was absolutely infuriating watching how vindictive and manipulative she was with the police every time they came out and how the police were utterly powerless to do anything about it. There was such a sad sense of inevitability about it.

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